


two shadows, reaching through the hopeless, heavy dusk

by NobodysHome



Category: The Dark Crystal (1982), The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance (TV)
Genre: Fate Bonds, Implied/Referenced Torture, Other, Some hurt/comfort, The Puppet Masters, i just think they're neat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-11
Updated: 2019-09-11
Packaged: 2020-10-14 07:42:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20597159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NobodysHome/pseuds/NobodysHome
Summary: The heart sang and it showed him, of all of them, that one must not stay two. He, the Wanderer, who was never so content to stay in a single place as his brethren who sit and wait in their tasks. He, the  most curious, the most likely to listen, and to wonder where it was Thra called him to.So, he answered.





	two shadows, reaching through the hopeless, heavy dusk

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not a lore expert on this universe by any means. 
> 
> I really just wanted to write these two meeting. 
> 
> Sorry for any lore errors in advance. 
> 
> Title is an excerpt from:  
"In the darkness, two shadows, reaching through the hopeless, heavy dusk. Their hands meet, and light spills in a flood like a hundred golden urns pouring out of the sun."
> 
> Madeline Miller, _The Song of Achilles_

Corruption is dangerous. Corruption is inevitable; urSu had said, and wisest of them all, urGoh knew it was not a lie. That the heart of Thra was dangerous, what it made them into just as well.

So he traveled with them all, away from the castle, to the sands and far beyond, out of reach of their other halves. Out of sight of their mistakes and everything that should stay contained within the halls of that place. 

But Thra did not stay silent in its anguish. 

The heart sang and it showed him, of all of them, that one must not stay two. He, the Wanderer, who was never so content to stay in a single place as his brethren who sit and wait in their tasks. He, the most curious, the most likely to listen and to wonder where it was Thra called him to. 

So, he answered. 

And he wandered, as he always did, back over the sands and the canyons, into groves and over the face of Thra until his feet bled and for once he thought he could wander no further. 

But the blood was not his. As he found his soles cut to ribbons, impossibly so, and he knew it was the Conquerer who had been put under a knife for something Urgoh would never know. 

And, for the first time since Thra sang to him, he felt an ache, deep within his chest, nestled under his ribs and fluttering; impossibly delicate. 

Bandaging the cuts, he only wished healing went two ways as well. That he could bind the other's wounds, perhaps to selfishly prevent his own pain. Or perhaps to know his journey wouldn't be hampered by the even more selfish ways of the Skeksis. 

He continued his journey, each step an agony, but nothing compared to the new one that began to grow where his soul should be instead. It wasn't a pain he knew. Nothing like the new abrasions, the bruises, the broken bones, and the burns that blossomed like a garden the closer he got to the end of his journey.

This wasn't a pain he could wrap up, put a salve on, and hope his counterpart would show him mercy for. It grew and grew, snaking through the fibers of him, until it wrapped itself around everything it could and wouldn't let go. And as he sat, resting for another night, he found no comfort in being alone as he used to.

The space next to him felt empty. The hollow in his chest emptier. The shape of him incomplete in every way where he only ever anguished over it's physical limitations in the very beginning. 

The new cut on his palm didn't feel like a punishment as he inspected it. Not with the way it wept, blood tracing the lines of his hand in a silent cry. He covered it with his other, but it felt incomplete, like other fingers would slot better within his own. 

And for the first time in a very long time, everything felt wrong, and he watched the three sisters greet the sky knowing he couldn't sleep while the other couldn't rest either. 

They were torturing him. And he didn't quite know why. Whether he had done something ill, something wrong. skekGra was their Conqueror, but perhaps he conquered for them no more. 

Perhaps Thra sang to him as well. 

That day he set out, awash with a beat of fear he hadn't felt since he opened his eyes and the world was too different. Fear for someone he couldn't yet reach, but he could feel them, through what Thra had done to them when it cracked one in two for their arrogance. 

Hubris landed them here and hubris still drove them apart. The other urRus content to sit in their safe isolation and the Skeksis blinded with everything that caused this in the first place.

It was another day before he found him, pulled by that thread in his chest that had wound tighter and tangled throughout his being. Tugging him somewhere as Thra continued it's lament in his ear with the chorus of creatures he did not know the names to. 

In one moment he was alone, more alone than he had ever been, and then he wasn't any longer. The creature he bundled into his arms, shivering, as bloodied as him, if not more-- for there had been none to tend to his wounds-- was skekGra. But most definitely a Conqueror no more. 

His title gone, the mantles and fineries the Skeksis adorned themselves in; all stripped away. No doubt for the crime of Thra's message he tried to share with them, as urGoh had done. 

The Conqueror was now a Heretic among his own, as urGoh was. And now it would no longer be anything but _Them_. 

He bandaged the Heretic's wounds, wrapped them tight, cleaned the blood and tended to the same hurts that marked himself. There was a different intimacy to it, knowing where each scratch was, that he could finally begin to heal now that he knew the others could hurt skekGra no longer.

urGoh built a fire, settled the Heretic as close as he could, draped one of his many robes around him and waited. The Heretic came to himself some time later, as the brother suns hid themselves beyond the mountains and darkness took Thra. 

It was a blink first, and then a flinch, before the aches and pains in himself shifted as the Heretic did. It was strange to witness the shared grief while he could see it, rather than the intangible phantom it was before. 

"Don't… move…" urGoh said. 

The Heretic only made a noise in response, something close to one of the small, angered creatures he encountered on his way here. And perhaps, for a moment, he had forgotten how different they were, when Thra had only sung of how similar they were. 

"You are...safe…. now." 

"You talk too slow." The Heretic rasped back in a huff. 

"And you…" he breathed, drawing out the sentence to watch the Skeksis' eye twitch. "...too fast." 

The exchange fell into nothing again and urGoh watched the Heretic tense under his scrutiny, eyeing him and glancing away, before seeming to give in to the silence pressed in around them. 

"Well, _Wanderer_, what do we do now?" The Heretic hissed, but urGoh knew when a creature only bared its teeth to ward off pain. 

"We wait…" urGoh pointed to the horizon. "Until the brothers...rise." 

The Heretic grumbled, turned to pick at his bandages and he reached out to deter him. The Skeksis only pulled away, out of reach and urGoh felt the thread in his chest wind tighter. 

"And when the suns do come up, then where will we go?" The Heretic asked. "There is nowhere on Thra that will have us any longer." 

"There is.. a place." urGoh said."Thra already... showed us." 

"_Us_?" The Heretic asked exasperatedly. "Maybe it showed you, but I didn't see anything that looked remotely habitable in that vision--" The Skesis gestured for a moment, as if searching for the right word. "--_thing_! Just far too much sand. And I _hate_ sand." 

"Sand… is not...that bad." 

"Says you!" The Heretic balked. "Do you have any idea how aggravating sand is between the toes? Not to mention it gets _everywhere_!" 

"We...will--" 

"'Go there anyways?' 'Travel in the morning?' Speak faster! I don't have all day to wait for you to finish a sentence." 

"Have… patience." 

The Heretic groaned. "You're talking like that on purpose, aren't you? Just to annoy me?" 

urGoh hummed. "...no." 

"Don't look at me like that! I can tell you're smiling even if your lips don't move." 

"I do not… know… what… you mean." 

The Heretic rolled his eyes, throwing his hands up exasperatedly only to hiss and clutch at the bandages covering his shoulder. The same spot on urGoh stung in tandem and he reached for it, watching as the skesis pressed his fingers against the wound. He felt it, the pressure applied to his own, as if the Skeksis had placed his hand upon him and left it there. 

The Heretic did not escape his brethren unscathed. This urGoh knew all too well, and of all the other matching scars and wounds, the splitting pain in his skull concerned him the most. He looked to the nail driven into the Heretic's own, sure that it was too late to extract it any longer. The runes scrawled along it's lip more damnation than anything. 

And for all the Skeksis' and their self mutilation, urGoh knew that this was not something the Heretic had done on his own. Not when he clutched at his wounds and hunched into himself. Not when the message on it only spelled blasphemy. 

"Why did…"

"'_Why did they do it'_?" The Heretic finished for him, a snarl in his breath. "Because the idea of giving up what I gained for them, of becoming one with you lot and relinquishing their hold on that crystal-- it's _insanity_ to them." 

urGoh said nothing. Remembering how the urRus had regarded his prophecy as nothing but corruption, a sickness that could spread among them. That it was a blessing he had been the one to receive it, so he could leave with it and never return. 

"Obviously, I was sick." The Heretic continued bitterly. "The Emperor loved my work you know. I was _respected_, revered among them. And when I told them about becoming one again, it was only madness to them...and the Emperor… he hoped maybe the Scientist could cure me of it," he spit, face turned from the fire and urGoh. "skekTek did his best." 

urGoh hummed, reaching over to place a hand on the Heretic's shoulder. This time the Skeksis did not move away, and the small comfort was enough for them both.

They were truly alone now, there were no others to turn to ever again, but maybe they were more whole than they had ever been.

That part of him that had sent him wandering for trine upon trine-- that had sent the Heretic off to conquer Thra's lands and it's people, in search of something he probably couldn't name either-- it was here now; before them. 

"Get… some rest." urGoh said instead of any consolation or apologies that would only fall empty here. "I… will keep… an eye...out." 

The Heretic grumbled at him, huffing the last word of his sentence at him before he could get it out, but didn't fight the request, bundling himself up in the oversized robes turned blanket. It was a while before urGoh heard snores from him, the fire slowly dying all the while, as the suns began their slow climb back into the sky. 

Tomorrow he and skekGra would head for the Dousan's land. To their new home. Together.


End file.
